There are a few EV indus­try stake­hold­ers who think car shar­ing plays an impor­tant role in win­ning over con­sumers to become inter­est­ed in, and pas­sion­ate about, plug-in elec­tric vehi­cles. While car shar­ing is slow to grow in the US, it is slow­ly dis­sem­i­nat­ing on col­lege cam­pus­es (much of this through Zip­car) and in urban dwelling. Daimler’s car2go divi­sion is open­ing up with EVs in five mar­kets in the US, start­ing with San Diego. Now, the com­pa­ny has gone to Port­land, Ore­gon. It’s real­ly tak­ing off in Port­land, which is not sur­pris­ing, since it was the home of some of the ear­li­est adopters years ago, and a com­mu­ni­ty that prides itself on embrac­ing green ini­tia­tives. So far, there are 6,000 new mem­bers in that city who’ve used the ser­vice more than 4,500 times. Short trips are what the cars are being used for, typ­i­cal­ly last­ing between 30 and 45 min­utes. Dri­vers are behind the wheel of elec­tric smart fort­wo cars and the reg­u­lar inter­nal com­bus­tion engine smart fort­wo.

For con­sumers impressed with cor­po­ra­tions tak­ing on envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty prac­tices, Toy­ota is stand­ing out – join­ing Hon­da, Nis­san, GM, Ford, and BMW in green ini­tia­tive pro­grams. Eight Toy­ota man­u­fac­tur­ing sites in North Amer­i­ca have reduced their ener­gy inten­si­ty by 10% or more (some­times up to 24%), meet­ing the stan­dards of the EPA’s Ener­gy Star Chal­lenge for Indus­try. Toy­ota Motor Man­u­fac­tur­ing in Huntsville, Ala., installed Ultra Con­stant Dis­charge light­ing in the plant’s park­ing lot, cut­ting its ener­gy inten­si­ty by 24%. Toy­ota facil­i­ties in Jack­son, Tenn.; Cam­bridge and Wood­stock, Ontario; Prince­ton, Ind.; St. Louis, Mo.; San Anto­nio, Texas; and Buf­fa­lo, West Vir­ginia, have seen sev­er­al ener­gy effi­cien­cies imple­ment­ed recent­ly.